With President Obama and the Democrat leadership in the House and Senate urging health care reform through reconciliation, several Senators are speaking out against using reconciliation.

Reconciliation was set up to allow for budget items to get through Congress after both the House and Senate passed slightly different bills.  However, both parties have used reconciliation in the past to move through items that were not purely budgetary.

Now the President and the Congressional Democrat leadership is threatening to use reconciliation to pass their massive health care reform bill.

Several leading Congressmen have spoke out against using the reconciliation process.  The following are several quotes from several Senators:

1. “The President hasn’t gotten his way. And that is now prompting a change in the Senate rules that really I think would change the character of the Senate forever…what I worry about would be that you essentially still have two chambers the House and the Senate but you have simply majoritarian absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the founders intended.”
2. “We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing it’s almost a temper tantrum. “
3. “Mr. President the right to extended debate is never more important than the one party who controls congress and the white house. In these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.”
4. “This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.  It is a fundamental power grab.
5. “You’ve got majority rule and then you have the senate over here where people can slow things down where they can debate where they have something called the filibuster. You know it seems like it’s a little less than efficient — well that’s right it is. And deliberately designed to be so.”
6. “They want their way every single time. And they will change the rules, break the rules, and misread the constitution so that they will get their way.”
7. “This is the way Democracy ends. Not with a bomb but with a gavel.”  

Who are all these Senators that have spoken out against the use of reconciliation to pass legislation? 

1. Barack Obama
2. Charles Schumer
3. Harry Reid
4. Joe Biden
5. Hillary Clinton
6. Charles Schumer
7. Max Baucus

Several more quotes against reconciliation can be found at Human Events. 

The hypocrisy that exists in our government is truly astounding.  Remember these quotes the President and Democrat leaders are on television or in the media talking about how they must pass health care reform through reconciliation.  President Obama is on record saying the the use of reconciliation is clearly something that the founders of our country did not intend.

Hot Air is reporting that even the NYT is pessimistic about the use of reconciliation.  This comes as even Nancy Pelosi is urging Democrats to support the health care reform bill even if the people the represent are against it as this is something “the people need” according to Pelosi.

The question is, are enough Sentators and Congressmen willing to fall on their swords to give the President and the Democrat leadership a political victory against the wishes of the majority of Americans?

The House Ethics Panel has been investigating Charles Rangel on several ethics issues for a long time.  On Thursday, the Ethics Panel found Charles Rangel guilty of breaking house rules for several trips that he took to the Caribbean with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  It seems that the trips were paid for by lobbyists, which is a violation of the ethics rules.

Charles Rangel gave a press conferrence late Thursday night where he blamed his staff members for allowing him to go on the trips.

The Charles Rangel ethics issues spell trouble for Nancy Pelosi as she faces a tough election year in the house.  On one hand, Pelosi needs to keep the Democrat image pure helping house Democrats who may be facing stiff competition in November.  On the other hand, she needs to keep the CBC happy by not removing Charles Rangel from his powerful position on the House Ways and Means committee.

Republicans will highlight any attempts by Nancy Pelosi to protect Charles Rangel if she opts to do so.  Had Rangel been a Republican congressman, everybody knows the outrage that Pelosi and other Democrats would show.

The correct course of action for Pelosi would be to remove Rangel from his chairmanship.  However, politics often overshadows the correct course of action.

How can Pelosi be so far off from the $1.8 trillion estimate?  Here is a hint, she isn’t trying to be truthful when trying to sell Obamacare to the American people.

What the Democrats have done is asked the CBO to score the bill as written.  The bill delays all spending until 2013, but raises taxes in 2010.  If effect, she puts 10 years of funding toward 7 years of costs.  When the CBO re-scores the bill starting at 2013 to 2022, the bill will cost the American taxpayer $1.8 trillion.

Truly accounting for the costs also means that Pelosi is not being truthful about her bill not raising the deficit.  According to the CBO, when scored correctly, the Pelosi version of Obamacare will add $650 billion to the deficit.

Pelosi is now pushing to have a vote on the bill this Saturday under the cover of darkness all the while keeping the American people in the dark by not meeting her pledge to publish the bill 72 hours before the vote.

Americans need to call their representatives in congress today to voice their opposition to the bill.  You can find the contact number for your representative here.  Make sure your representative knows that not only do you not support the bill, but you will actively seek to have them voted out of office if they support this bill.

Pelosi indicated that the bill would cost just under $894 billion, which is close to the cost of the Senate’s version of the bill.

However, the CBO estimated that the bill would cost just over $1 trillion, that is 1,000,000,000,000 to you and me.  Several Democrat officials indicated that the total cost of the bill would be just over $1.2 trillion or $300 billion more than Pelosi’s estimates.

In the Senate, the bill was kept under $900 billion by employing several accounting trickssuch as delaying costs for the first few years and moving almost $300 billion in spending to a separate bill (the total of the two would be $1.2 trillion, but you aren’t supposed to notice that).  It is unclear at this time if the Pelosi bill includes that $300 billion or not.  Having it included would push the cost of the bill to over $1.5 trillion.

According to house Republicans, Pelosi’s bill would also create over 100 new federal bureaucracies.  Among the new departments set up would be the Health Insurance Exchange; the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation; the Public Health Investment Fund; the Public Health Workforce Corps; an Assistant Secretary for Health Information; the Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health; grant programs for alternative medical liability laws, and infant mortality programs.

Not surprisingly, the media isn’t calling out Pelosi on her attempt to pull one over the American people by misstating the cost of her bill by over $300 billion.  Hopefully, moderate Democrats will refuse to support this costly behemoth of a health care reform bill.

One of the easier ways to reduce costs have been left out of most of the bills penned so far this year.  However, the newest House bill that Nancy Pelosi introduced does include a provision for Tort reform.

According to many estimates, common sense tort reform could save America $54 billion over the next 10 years.  However, the Democrat party receives millions from trial attorney special interest groups every year.  Tort reform makes sense in that it can reduce costs and would cost tax payers billions of dollars to implement.

The current version of the bill that Pelosi unveiled provides insight into the type of tort reform that Democrats support.

According to a post at HotAir.com, the Health Care Reform bill  on pages 1431 – 1433 provides for states to enact “alternative medical liability laws”.  However, the restricts the states to only allowing tort reform that requires that ”the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages”.

You can expect to hear all about how the Democrats have addressed the need for tort reform in their most recent bill.  However, you need to remember that this tort reform will allow for anything but actual reform.

Not long ago, he said that it is the “moral thing to do” when refering to the “rich” paying higher taxes to pay for social programs.

Interestingly enough, this champion of higher taxes refuses to pay his own income taxes.  In fact, he has been under an ethics investigation for almost a year for not paying taxes, receiving gifts, and improperly filling out disclosure forms that are required of all congressmen by law.

A recent Wall Street Journal article details many of the congressman’s ethical issues.

Apparently, the person in charge of writing tax laws has neglected to pay taxes on over $75,000 in rental property income.  He first denied that he had any income on the property, but after an investigation proved that he had income he blamed his wife and the Spanish speaking people that run the property for him.

“Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel explained.

Once everything regarding the income tax liability came to light, the ever so moral congressman promised to file an amended tax return to clear up the small oversight that would land most Americans rich and poor alike in jail.  However, the deadline to file amended tax returns has long since pasted without any effort on the congressman to file a new return.

Perhaps part of the reason that Mr. Rangel wants to ignore all of his income is that he rents 4 rent controlled properties in New York.  If his income goes above $175,000, he loses the apartments.  One of which he uses as an office with is a violation of rent control rules.

In addition to the income tax issue, Mr. Rangel also claimed the “homestead” exemption DC to avoid paying all of his DC property taxes.  However, he also claimed the same thing for his NY appartments which isn’t possible as you can only have one.

He is also in hot water for receiving an interest free loan for the vacation property that is causing the income tax issues.  This is a violation of the House rules on gifts.

When Speaker of the House Pelosi promised to end the “culture of corruption” in Washington, she obviously forgot to say that she was exempting several members of the democrat party.  Would the leaders in congress and the main stream media sit by and allow a Republican congressmen be the chair of a committee while being investigated on 6 ethics issues?

We’ve come to the point where we allow our representatives to propose laws on the people that they themselves refuse to follow and are not forced to do so.  How can a person not pay their taxes and not end up in jail or at least court?  When the current Secretary of the Treasury didn’t pay all of his taxes, he eventually wrote the check, but wasn’t assessed interest and penalties.  Can any other American receive such treatment.

We need to demand a higher standard of those we elect to represent and lead us.  When the people making the rules don’t have to follow the rules, we slowly becomes slaves to the government.